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A Woman’s Story

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Re: A Woman’s Story

#71

Post by burgerbrain »

tomjen3 wrote: post #58
jbooth wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"unfounded prejudice is unstable in a competitive market for labor." Did you ever see that study in France where they submitted the same exact resumes with Christian names and Arab names? I'll let you guess as to the results.

Assuming this isn't a trick... There are two likely scenarios: 1) The employers are racist biggots based on things that don't correlate with job performance. In this case betting against them is a winning strategy. 2) The employers are racist based on observed data from previous hires. Based on that they assume that a person with an Arab name is less able to perform. This may not be fair for the individual, but may b…

(I suspect you already know this, but I find it is an interesting topic so I'll post it for others)

It should probably be noted when talking about the history of science during the so called dark ages that the Islamic Empire covered a very vast area. The society was homogeneous only in religion, not in 'race'.

My (limited) understanding is that their scientific collapse was the result of a series of (religious in nature) bans on various scientific activities (translation, dissection, etc) This seems to have had fair reaching effects on the viability of their Empire and has likely been the cause of the Muslim worlds comparatively limited scientific activity since then.

Therefore I would expect that the decline of Islamic science is not a symptom of a perceived performance deficiency among people with Arab names, but rather the cause. Considering the apparently solely cultural nature of the issue, any observed phenomenon could be subject to extremely rapid change and is likely to have a very significant number of outliers.

Re: A Woman’s Story

#72

Post by moldbug »

roguecoder wrote: post #66
barrkel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, in essence, black people today are "likely" incompetent at their jobs because of affirmative action? That seems to be what you're writing. And it doesn't look good.

It's also not how affirmative action works, even if it was still broadly used (which it's not): http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/02/granting-women-a... Aggregate performance was either unaffected or improved in the presence of affirmative action. This fits with history: until 1972 almost no women were admitted to MIT, but it didn't make the men perform less well for all the affirmative action they received no…

which it's not

Jesus. Do we live in the same reality?

http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/07/how_divers...

TL;DR: The Espenshade study found that African chromosomes (by the "one-drop rule") equaled 450 SAT points over Asian chromosomes as a college admissions factor.

(Not that actual genetic testing was used. It probably should be, though. Why encourage race fraud?)

Your link is to a study in which "affirmative action" is used in the sense it was originally implied, not the sense in which it is actually used:

Note that none of these constitute "reverse discrimination," an accusation affirmative action plans often face. In no case was a top-performing man denied a reward if he outperformed everyone else. The main effect the researchers found was an increase in the number of able women willing to participate.

Re: A Woman’s Story

#73

Post by rmc »

jbooth wrote: post #34
mhartl wrote: post #9

There were a lot of questions about numbers such as guessing the next number in a sequence. There were some logic puzzles, the kind where you have to figure out that it’s the baker who rides a bicycle and the mechanic who lives in the house with a red door. There were some strange questions where she was given a sketch of a three dimensional figure such as a cube with some missing pieces, and she had to guess which s…

"unfounded prejudice is unstable in a competitive market for labor." Did you ever see that study in France where they submitted the same exact resumes with Christian names and Arab names? I'll let you guess as to the results.

Similar things are noticable when male names and female names are swapped.

It's evidence that there is still a lot of racism now. What do you think the 1950s were like?!

Re: A Woman’s Story

#74

Post by Tichy »

kahirsch wrote: post #42
rmc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is essentially an IQ test, and what they discovered was that Gwen was highly intelligent. They then did the smart thing and judged her based on her demonstrated aptitude rather than on the prevailing prejudices of the day Actually, if you read the whole thing, they didn't believe her "demonstrated aptitude" because of their "prevailing prejedices". She had to fight to get them to see her demonstrated aptitude. M…

> That's because in the past, the IQ tests were not fair, objective and colour-blind, but were set up in such a way as to bias against poorer people (which will be mostly black in the USA). This isn't true at all. They haven't been shown to be biased, merely that blacks score lower. Extensive research has show that IQ tests have equal predictive power for blacks and whites. "Disparate impact" merely means that blacks…

"They haven't been shown to be biased"

When I think about that question, I think about questions that would be harder for me (white caucasian) than somebody from another "race" or culture. That is easy: for example imagine selecting some kind of image puzzles involving kanjii symbols, or telling apart chinese faces. They are just images, right, so no bias? But it will be much more easy to tell them apart for somebody with a chinese background than for me. If such questions exists that are biased against me, it seems at least very plausible that other questions could be biased against other "races" and cultures. Another example I read about is how different cultures see the drawing of a box (a 3d wireframe). Apparently in western cultures people would see it as a drawing of a 3d box, whereas some poor test takers in Africa just saw a 2d drawing. This was then interpreted as Africans being less intelligent, when really they were just as correct as the people who saw the 3d shape. It just wasn't such a common meme where they lived to draw 3d shapes like that.

Re: A Woman’s Story

#75

Post by rmc »

moldbug wrote: post #32
mhartl wrote: post #9

There were a lot of questions about numbers such as guessing the next number in a sequence. There were some logic puzzles, the kind where you have to figure out that it’s the baker who rides a bicycle and the mechanic who lives in the house with a red door. There were some strange questions where she was given a sketch of a three dimensional figure such as a cube with some missing pieces, and she had to guess which s…

Note also that the methods of 60 years ago (a) discovered Gwen's ability, (b) promoted her to a commensurate position, (c) gave a productive citizen a genuine sense of achievement and accomplishment. All in a period which was universally racist and sexist by today's progressive standards. Now? Gwen's intelligence would probably also be detected, if by less straightforward and reliable methods. Because her African X c…

This the old trope that now-a-days the pendulum has swung too far and women, blacks etc. are now in a privileged position compared to white, straight, anglo men.

Nonsense. And spreads the idea that all black people shouldn't be where they are in the company and are all tricksters who are rubbish at their job.

Re: A Woman’s Story

#76

Post by moldbug »

jberryman wrote: post #63
kahirsch wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's because in the past, the IQ tests were not fair, objective and colour-blind, but were set up in such a way as to bias against poorer people (which will be mostly black in the USA). This isn't true at all. They haven't been shown to be biased, merely that blacks score lower. Extensive research has show that IQ tests have equal predictive power for blacks and whites. "Disparate impact" merely means that blacks…

> Extensive research has show that IQ tests have equal predictive power for blacks and whites. This says nothing about whether an IQ test is biased when used for other purposes than predicting future achievement (such as a job interview), and a supposedly-but-not-actually-objective test is a very dangerous thing; there's a lot of ugly historical baggage where science has met race in the past.

Job interviews aren't for the purpose of predicting future achievement? Say again?

there's a lot of ugly historical baggage where science has met race in the past.

There is indeed:

http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/meta/gould-morton-lewis-2...

If that isn't ugly, what is?

Re: A Woman’s Story

#77

Post by rmc »

moldbug wrote: post #51
barrkel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, in essence, black people today are "likely" incompetent at their jobs because of affirmative action? That seems to be what you're writing. And it doesn't look good.

Why doesn't it "look good?" Oh, noes - am I a witch? Could you, as an engineer, design a better system to make sure that all Eskimos are "likely" incompetent at their jobs, than promoting Eskimos over Tamils just because they are Eskimos and not Tamils? Another cross-cultural comparison might be useful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumiputera_(Malaysia)

Why doesn't it "look good?" Oh, noes - am I a witch?

Witch, no. Racist, maybe.

Re: A Woman’s Story

#78

Post by ugh »

Goodbye HN. After repeatedly demonstrating your racism and sexism I just cannot take it anymore. It was nice knowing you.

Re: A Woman’s Story

#79

Post by [deleted] »

rmc wrote: post #25
mhartl wrote: post #9

There were a lot of questions about numbers such as guessing the next number in a sequence. There were some logic puzzles, the kind where you have to figure out that it’s the baker who rides a bicycle and the mechanic who lives in the house with a red door. There were some strange questions where she was given a sketch of a three dimensional figure such as a cube with some missing pieces, and she had to guess which s…

This is essentially an IQ test, and what they discovered was that Gwen was highly intelligent. They then did the smart thing and judged her based on her demonstrated aptitude rather than on the prevailing prejudices of the day Actually, if you read the whole thing, they didn't believe her "demonstrated aptitude" because of their "prevailing prejedices". She had to fight to get them to see her demonstrated aptitude. M…

[deleted]

Re: A Woman’s Story

#80

Post by RandallBrown »

astine wrote: post #45
moldbug wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note also that the methods of 60 years ago (a) discovered Gwen's ability, (b) promoted her to a commensurate position, (c) gave a productive citizen a genuine sense of achievement and accomplishment. All in a period which was universally racist and sexist by today's progressive standards. Now? Gwen's intelligence would probably also be detected, if by less straightforward and reliable methods. Because her African X c…

she would constantly feel like a fraud, Nonsense. Americans today are trained from a young age to have a sense of entitlement. People who are promoted above their ability are quite capable of blaming their inability to perform on prejudice or conspiracy on the part of peers or subordinates.

Women in computing constantly feel like frauds.
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